Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

Wow!  I thought I’d miss today.  But I made it – just about the first thing I posted for Art Every Day Month as a work in progress is now finished.  It’s a college using images from vintage fruit and vegetable crate labels as well as turn-of-the-century sheet music.  For lack of a better title, I’m calling it Rhythm of Life.  As you’ll be able to see, the end stage is rather nebulous.  Not as full of the energy of what you might call infancy and toddler-hood, childhood, and young adult stages.  Certainly none of the confidence.

I meant to have this posted earlier, but my husband and I had a great dinner at Valentiens, (go here to eat if you haven’t and even if you have) then were joined by BakoArtConnect and Prosejunkie for a nice after-dinner drink.  Or drinks.  Which accounts for the number of times I’ve had to correct my typing.  Check out Prosejunkie if you want a literary challenge.  This guy is reading the 100 top books in the Modern Library: he started with Joyce’s Ulysses, and managed to do a cogent and astute analysis of one of the most impenetrable books in the English language.

So here is Rhythm of Life.  In a less than perfect reproduction.

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After getting home from Colorado on Thursday, I can say finally that my cold is gone and I am caught up.  Which is, of course, a relative statement.  And, yes, I realize it’s only been two days, but I’ve been itching to get into the studio.  And I did, and the results are here in Still Life: Trunk.  I’m not 100% satisfied.  But it’s what I can get for AEDM today.  I’ll put up two versions.  Tell me which one you like best if you have time.  I’m leaning towards the first.

By the way, the photos are of my grandmother on right,  and great-grandmother on left.

Well, maybe I like the second one best.  Anxious to know what y’ll think.

Friday the 13th – a lucky day.  My husband and I were married on a Friday the 13th 41 years ago!

Home from Colorado and I’ll miss the in-person help from my son-in-law Steve.  He knows photoshop inside out, so when I wanted to do something like give the appearance of motion, all I had to do was say, “Steve, I want this to look like a pinwheel.  How do I do that?”

So todays entry for Art Every Day Month is Daisy Stairs.

When I was at Pismo recently I took a picture of the stairs leading down to the beach.  Since I love the pattern and symmetry in photos like this, I knew I wanted to do more with it.  Here’s the original photo.

I had to crop the photo to end up with the square shape; also, I wanted to ditch the greenery.  That and a few other steps produced Pink Daisy Series Three:  Daisy Stairs.

Just in case, here’s the first two.

Daisy Wave, and below, Daisy Wheel

The ever-present daisy is in the floral gallery on my web site.  Taken in Redstone, CO.

In the airport in Grand Junction, waiting for the flight from Denver to arrive so I can get on and go right back to Denver and then Bakersfield.  It’ll be good to see my husband and my cats.  And my house.  But those wonderful comforts like the big bathtub and the 100% latex foam hypoallergenic mattress…well, I’ll really be  happy to see them all again.

Anyhow, for today’s AEDM, I have a few last Colorado creative memories.  To see all the wonderful art and participants in AEDM, look here.

First, Paonia.  Here’s the main street.

Yes, this IS the main street.  Population is about 3,500.  No stop lights.  No traffic.  No bad air.  Good schools.  Good restaurants.  Good organic produce.  Many wineries.  Excellent art colony.  But don’t tell anyone because this town is a little gem.  Did I mention the deer, elk, prairie dogs, bald eagles?  And the moose from last year that wandered down from Grand Mesa?

It has other little small town quirks.  This is what we saw yesterday when we headed out to Delta.

There was a round up and the cows were being moved down the main highway!  Actually, pretty cool.

Back in town, here’s a typical street.  There are homes tucked here and there on the mesas, but in town, this is what you see.

But at the end of the street, turning the corner, is the coolest fence I’ve ever seen.  Talk about art!

I want to do this in Bakersfield, but I don’t think folks in our neighborhood would react well.  Nor do I think they would go unmolested. I’ll leave you with a couple of detail shots .  Tomorrow I’ll have another in the Pink Daisy series.  I’m happy to be going home even though I love being with the Davies Five.   As soon as I get rid of this pathetic cold, I will be in the studio.  Hooray!  Creative every day!

AND I have some new photos in the flower gallery.  They’re at the front so you don’t have to go all the way through if you don’t want to.  You may not want to look at all, and that’s fine!  But they are there.

Today’s AEDM (Art Every Day Month) adventure took us to downtown Paonia, Delta, and the Pour Farm in Hotchkiss.  The cookie making is a bonus from a few days ago.  First let’s look at Delta – a small town on the Western Slope of Colorado.  Nearest “big” town is Grand Junction, and it’s 26 miles from where my daughter lives in Paonia.  Our mission:  retrieve a prescription from Walmart.  My mission: take photos of the murals.

Murals in Delta, Colorado

An interesting mural is an Homage to Diversity.

I’m going to load the photos without captions because they tell their own stories.

This one has something neat – the flowers are numbered and the names of the flowers are numbered below, so you can identify them.

Ceramics

Karen and I took Annabelle and Jackson to the Pour Farm to paint ceramics.  Love the name.  The owner has hundreds and hundreds of molds and makes her own ceramics.  She even mixes the sand and other ingredients.  That’s pretty cool.  So we painted.

The Pour Farm is in Hotchkiss.  The owner is on the left, then Annabelle, Jackson and Karen.

Jackson is really concentrating.

I’m painting a turkey dish.  Harder than it looks, actually!  Mainly because you don’t really know what the colors will look like after it’s fired.

Cookies

Making cookies counts as art, right?  Jackson, Annabelle and Cooper (next photo) decorate.

Cooper has a prime seat.

That does it.  Tomorrow I fly home to Bakersfield, so tomorrow’s AEDM will be brief!  I need to add how much I’m enjoying looking at everyone’s art and exchanging comments.  What a wonderful group of people!